How to Organize Crime<sup>1</sup>

Baccara, Mariagiovanna; Bar‐Isaac, Heski

doi:10.1111/j.1467-937x.2008.00508.x

Cited by 92 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Can we draw any implication on how to design norms that minimize the opportunities of SCI? In order to thrive, SCI requires well-enforced normative systems (Baccara and Bar-Isaac 2008), such as making the mutual threat of denunciation credible. Weakening enforcement to counter SCI would of course defy the purpose of norms and have costs greater than benefits; it would be like hiding one's wallet in other people's pockets to prevent theft.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…How can adulterers trust that their lovers will never blackmail them? SCI, we argue, is one powerful answer (see also Baccara and Bar-Isaac 2008;Cook, Hardin, and Levi 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%

“…We conceptualise the VG as a one-shot game (rather than a repeated game) to rule out the shadow of the future as a possible mechanism enforcing cooperation (Axelrod 1984;Baccara and Bar-Isaac 2008;Kreps and Wilson 1982). How then can SCI promote cooperation in the one-shot VG?…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

Gambetta¹,

Przepiorka²

2019

SocScience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Well-enforced norms create an opportunity for norm breakers to cooperate in ventures requiring trust. This is realized when norm breakers, by sharing evidence of their breaches, make themselves vulnerable to denunciation and therefore trustworthy. The sharing of compromising information (SCI) is a strategy employed by criminals, politicians, and other actors wary of their partners' trustworthiness in which the cost of ensuring compliance is offloaded on clueless norm enforcers. Here we introduce SCI as a sui generis cooperative strategy and test its functioning experimentally. In our experiment, subjects first acquire the label "dove" or "hawk" depending on how cooperative or uncooperative they are, respectively. Hawks acquire compromising information embodied in their label and can reveal it before an interaction with trust at stake. Unlike doves, hawks who reveal their label make themselves vulnerable to their partners, who can inflict a penalty on them after interaction. We find that even students in as artificial a setting as a computerized decision laboratory grasp the advantage of SCI and use it to cooperate. Our results corroborate the idea that compromising information can be conceived as a "hostage" that, when mutually exchanged, makes each party to the interaction vulnerable and therefore trustworthy in joint endeavours.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…How can adulterers trust that their lovers will never blackmail them? SCI, we argue, is one powerful answer (see also Baccara and Bar-Isaac 2008;Cook, Hardin, and Levi 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

Gambetta¹,

Przepiorka²

2019

SocScience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Members of crime rings and those who have been influenced by them exhibit high in-group trust (Baccara & Bar-Isaac, 2008;Bowles & Gintis, 2004;Meier et al, 2016). This trust persists because in-group members can be expected to protect and care for each other, even if they exhibit low integrity toward outgroup members.…”

Section: When Morally Motivated Deception Is Rewardedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deception and the marketplace of ideas

Levine

Duncan

2021

Consumer Psychology Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

American democracy is built, in part, on the ideal of a “free marketplace of ideas.” Consumers are assumed to have access to the same arguments, and through deliberation, come to a consensus about which arguments are true, and therefore, best. In this article, we explain how deceptive communication undermines this ideal. We focus on two key dimensions—the motive of deception and the perception of dishonesty—that influence people's propensity to deceive and the social rewards of doing so. Deception is seen as the most justified when it is morally motivated and when it involves indirect tactics that are not perceived as particularly dishonest. We argue, therefore, that morally motivated half‐truths, rather than blatantly selfish lies, may do the greatest damage to the marketplace of ideas. Ultimately, this article advances our understanding of the causes and consequences of deception and helps to explain the dynamics that lead to widespread misinformation in our social world.

show abstract

“…In our paper, the focus is on how the criminal organization incentivizes its members, rather than the protection it can provide to them. 15 In addition, we 14 Baccara and Bar-Isaac (2008) analyze the internal organization of criminal groups but do not address optimal police strategies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective

Bravard,

Durieu,

Kamphorst

et al. 2023

J Public Economic Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Even among themselves, criminals are not seen as trustworthy. Consequently, a criminal organization needs to incentivize its members, either by threats of violence or by rewarding good behavior. The cost of using violence depends on the resources police allocate to investigating intraorganizational violence. This means that the police may affect the choice of an incentive scheme by the criminal organization. The design of the optimal strategy for crime control has to take this into account. We develop a model of an infinitely repeated criminal labor market where (i) a criminal organization hires and incentivizes members, and (ii) peripheral crime (crime outside the criminal organization) is a stepping stone to a career in organized crime. We establish that there are two possible optimal strategies for the police. (i) There are situations in which the optimal strategy for the police is to use all of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals. (ii) In other situations, the optimal strategy for the police is to spend the minimum amount of resources to ensure that the criminal organization cannot punish disloyal criminals, and spend the rest of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals.

show abstract

How to Organize Crime¹

Cited by 92 publications

References 31 publications

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

Deception and the marketplace of ideas

Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

How to Organize Crime1

Cited by 92 publications

References 31 publications

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

Deception and the marketplace of ideas

Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

How to Organize Crime¹